Fracture behaviour and energy dissipation of textile-reinforced strain-hardening cementitious composites under drop-weight impact loading

Textile-reinforced strain-hardening cementitious composites (TR-SHCCs) offer significant potential for structural strengthening applications, but limited research has been conducted on their impact behaviour. The focus of this study was on the low-velocity impact response of TR-SHCCs using an automated drop-weight setup and fractal dimension (FD) analysis. Different fibre-reinforced polymer fabrics (carbon fibre fabric, steel fibre fabric and tight-weave steel fibre fabric) were analysed. It was found that an appropriately used textile could enhance the tensile strength and toughness of SHCCs. The TR-SHCCs demonstrated excellent resistance to low-energy impact. At drop heights of 100 mm and 200 mm, the maximum impact force of the TR-SHCCs was 1.42 and 1.44 times that of the non-reinforced SHCC, respectively. At a drop height of 300 mm, the maximum displacement of the TR-SHCCs was 1.26 times that of the SHCC. A complementary set of metrics, including FD, total crack area and maximum crack width, was employed to quantify damage, and Topsis-based multi-criteria aggregation was used for overall assessment. The overall assessment provided a quantitative method to assess the extent of damage in TR-SHCCs, offering a new approach for analysing their damage degradation process under impact loading .